but her father by playing the harlot. This drew out the terrible doom of burning her with fire. Jehovah is not mocked but sanctified in those that are near Him. It is divine government for those under law.

Now the only priests Christianity recognises are the confessors of Christ. They are a holy and a royal priesthood. The Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts them in the use of more than Aaronic privilege, as do the apostles John and Peter. It is the unbelieving pride of theology to apply priesthood to the gifts of Christ or to local charges as elders. Not once do we find this in the N. T. which in spirit and letter so designates every Christian. There is no such application to ministers in the word. Their function from God is to preach to the world, or to teach the saints. Priests have the wholly distinct place of drawing near to God in prayer and praise, offering up "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." are therefore bound to keep clear of spiritual death, and leave the dead to bury their dead. They are to reckon themselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, their consciences purified from dead works for religious service of a living God. Christ is now their life who by His death and resurrection gives them the victory. All things are theirs, not life only but death, things present and things to come. Even Christ's judgment-seat has no terror for them, but awakens earnest pity and zeal to persuade the perishing for whom they know how awful it will be, unless they repent and believe the gospel.

They

But the Jewish priests of old, the sons of Aaron, were the enemies of the Lord beyond the infatuated people; they and the voices of the chief priests prevailed against the less hardened, the heathen, Pilate. They are now broken off the olive tree and have lost their standing till mercy work their revival at the close. Hence as there is the setting aside of the commandment going before for its weakness and unprofitableness, the way lay open for the introduction of a better hope, through which we draw nigh to God. Christians exclusively are priests now by virtue of Christ's work and God's call. To make ministers such, and even of a higher grade, is ominously like the gainsaying of Korah: the presumption of the Levite to take the place of, not the Great Priest only, but of any priest whatever. As priests are we called of God, not to uncleanness in any way or degree, but in sanctification as the condition that characterises the partakers of a heavenly calling.

It is here, we may notice, that evangelicalism is so short. Rarely does any one nurtured in that school get beyond the denial of priesthood now save Christ's. But it is of importance to press the positive truth, that every Christian is a priest to God now. It will be said that he is a priest spiritually; and the concession is just the truth. There are no priests now save of a spiritual kind. Christianity knows of none formal or fleshly. Every Christian has an indefeasable title to draw near into the only sanctuary, and through the only efficacious sacrifice which God recognises. And

all are called to exercise this the only real title, existing on earth, habitually. In Heb. x. 19, &c., it is set out with great plainness of speech.

THE HIGH PRIEST TO BE UNSULLIED.

Lev. xxi. 10-15.

HERE it is not the general sanctity of the Aaronic line, but the holy character incumbent on their chief because of the anointing of his God.

10 And the priest that is greater than his brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, and who is consecrated to put on the garments, shall not uncover his head (or let the hair of his head go loose), nor rend his garments. 11 Neither shall he come near any person dead, nor make himself unclean for his father nor for his mother. 12 Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God; for the consecration (or crown) of the anointing oil of his God [is] upon him: I [am] Jehovah. 18 And he shall take a wife in her virginity. A widow or a divorced woman or one dishonoured, a harlot, these shall he not take; but he shall take as wife a virgin from among his peoples. 15 And he shall not profane his seed among his peoples; for I Jehovah sanctify him" (vers. 10–15).

14

It is not merely as the highest of the sacerdotal that these injunctions were bid. The Spirit of God does not fail to keep before us, even in the O.T.

F

when the first man was being put to the test, that He ever looks on to the Second. Thereby the believing reader, who believes in spirit while the letter is seen, was also taught to look for Him. So we saw in the early part of Lev. iv. as compared with the rest. Again, a similar principle is observable in chap. viii., not in a negative way but more positive, in the anointing itself. Further, though in a still more different manner, we may discern in the singular place of the great priest on the atonement day (Lev. xvi.). And so is it here also.

Literally the anointed priest must not yield to the exigencies of mourning or the defilement of death, no, not for his father or for his mother, whose honour is so specially maintained in the Ten Words. In Christ as Priest we have superiority to death made most conspicuous. Nor is it only in the striking type of Melchizedek and his "order," as we see it applied in Heb. vii. for which the mode of notifying the royal priest of Salem gave occasion: "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life." Even when the exercise of priesthood is introduced according to the Aaronic pattern, the priesthood that does not pass to another is pressed, as constituting Him able to save completely those that draw near to God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them: an element as foreign to Melchizedek as offering sacrifice or burning incense.

Next he was not to go out of the sanctuary,